Disasterology
by provocative envy
Summary: IN-PROGRESS: She wakes up at exactly midnight on the eve of her nineteenth birthday; she screams. HG/DM.
1. Chapter 1

**Disasterology**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

_**Introduction**_: _p. 2 – 26_

###

_**(title page)**_

She wakes up at exactly midnight on the eve of her nineteenth birthday—

She screams.

She is vaguely aware of Lavender and Parvati scrambling with their bed hangings, frantic voices calling out for Harry and Ron and Ginny and Professor McGonagall—_oh, God, she's scratched herself, look, look at all the blood—_and she feels a hand on her forehead, registers the removal of her nightgown and the emergence of a fresh set of flannel sheets—_impossibly high core temperature, Poppy, this is not a simple fever_—but her teeth are chattering and her thoughts are spinning and she can't quite speak, can't quite explain that she is not ill, no, she is not in pain and she is not in danger, no—_send an owl to her parents right away, Minerva, we may have missed something important in her ancestry—_because she is _disconnected_, she is a trillion separate threads of magic being torn apart and rearranged, twined and twisted and tied tight, knots unraveled and body chemistry recalibrated—

She is burning from the inside out.

She is shedding her skin and losing her center of gravity.

She is _changing_.

###

_**(table of contents)**_

She spends three days behind a starched white curtain in the hospital wing. She isn't allowed visitors, but a new stack of library books appears on her bedside table every few hours—they're not textbooks, are completely unrelated to any of the classes she's taking that year, and their subject matter varies from regional Bulgarian history to romantic fairytales, field guides on the mating habits of golden eagles and comically outdated treatises summarizing the finer points of muggle genetics research.

She writes _Veela?_ on a spare scrap of parchment and tucks it into the front cover of _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_; she receives a compendium of Greek mythology later that day, two red satin bookmarks flagging the sections that focus on Sirens and Harpies.

She sighs, frustrated and frightened and _off-balance_, craves the grounded concrete stability of logic and reason, needs to fill in the blanks and reconcile who she had been with _what_ she is now—

She holds up her hand.

She wonders how many other choices she won't be allowed to make.

She watches as her fingernails lengthen and sharpen and curve down at the ends, like talons, wicked and deadly.

She is dangerous.

She is _different_.

###

_**(foreword)**_

"It's strange," Ginny remarks casually, the common room fire crackling behind her. "You look exactly the same. Aren't Veela supposed to be all blonde and shiny and…_tall_?"

Hermione snorts, rolling up her essay on the reactive properties of crystallized water and mandrake root—she has exceeded the two-foot limit by four and a half inches, but she doesn't think that Slughorn will notice once she accepts his invitation to his quarterly dinner party.

"I'm a hybrid," she reminds Ginny. "Other than some interesting physiological responses to anger, nothing else is wrong with me."

Ginny plucks at the ruffled feather end of her quill.

"I didn't say anything was _wrong _with you, but yeah, Veela are kind of mysterious," she muses, settling back against a pile of tartan crimson cushions. "Dad says there isn't much published about them beyond the raging sex appeal and, you know, the _actual_ rage. Is it true that you'll have a mate?"

Hermione fumbles with the zipper of her herringbone satchel.

"Um, Dumbledore was rather vague about that," she hedges. "All he told me was that there were a lot of misconceptions about Veela mating habits. I didn't get the impression that I would be affected, though."

Ginny chuckles.

"Pity," she says, stretching out her legs. "Would've been an ace excuse to blow off McLaggen next Hogsmeade weekend."

Hermione winces.

"Not really," she says, fiddling with the rolled-up sleeves of her blouse. "My Veela mate could have been worse than him—it's not like I would have had any control over it."

Ginny pretends to shiver, scooting closer to the cast-iron grate of the fire.

"Lucky you, then," she says, tucking a strand of red-gold hair behind her ear. "It's bad enough that all of this _latent magical creature_ nonsense had to manifest so weirdly—would've been triply awful to have to deal with a crap mate at the same time."

Hermione manages a small smile.

"Yeah," she murmurs. "Lucky me."

###

_**(exhibit i.i)**_

The dreams start in late October.

The moon is full, a brilliant blue-silver circle in the sky, and the ghost stories are rampant—there are scores of dead leaves, yellow and brown and orange, wet and brittle as they stick to the bottom of her shoes, and there are a hundred floating pumpkins in the Great Hall, carved and glowing, macabre grins lit up with the flames of cinnamon-scented candles. Ron laughs too loudly at Seamus's jokes, Harry blushes when Ginny leans across the table to kiss his cheek, and Lavender draws a cartoon skeleton on the back of Hermione's hand with a tube of mascara and an ivory lip pencil.

Hermione goes to bed early.

She turns down her blankets while her body is still warm from a mug of spiced apple cider.

She yawns into her pillow.

She lets her eyelids flutter shut—

She is not prepared for what happens next.

###

_**(disclaimer)**_

"I need you to explain to me exactly what is going on," she says, voice tremulous—and her heart is racing and her claws are peeking out and she knows, _she knows_, that her eyes are flashing that famous crystalline Veela blue—

Dumbledore studies her for a long moment, bony fingers laced together over the smooth mahogany surface of his desk. He looks sad.

"You're a hybrid, Miss Granger," he eventually replies. "Which is unusual on its own, of course, but your case is…particularly unique."

She stares over his shoulder, counts the methodical _drip drip drip_ of his antique bronze water clock.

"Because I have no recorded magical ancestry," she says in a dull monotone. "And my heritage chose to present itself—late in life. Is that correct?"

He sniffs, adjusting the knot of his celestial blue dressing gown.

"Yes," he says slowly, "it is. However, I did not anticipate—you see, Hermione, hybrids very rarely exhibit any true Veela characteristics. They may have an inherent affinity for music, or an uncommonly strong libido around times of peak fertility, but they generally are not able to shift into their true forms. Their access to those traits almost always remains genetically dormant. And they are therefore not _vulnerable _to the less well-known markers of the Veela species."

She flinches at the reminder that she is no longer human—that she is _isolated_, separate, even more of an outlier.

"The dreams?" she prompts, swallowing.

"Describe them for me, please," he says, clearing his throat. "What did you see? Where are you located? You've already mentioned that you cannot wake up on your own when you're in the middle of one, but what does the tether feel like? Is it an emotional pull? Physical? Do you panic inside the dreamscape, or are you not affected until you return to consciousness?"

Her gut clenches—_who _did she see, not _what_—

"Blond hair," she says, quiet and tense. "I see blond hair and grey eyes and—that's it. Nothing is specific or all that distinct—I may be in a bed, I suppose, but the _tether_ is…physical. Tangible. Like I'm tied down."

He purses his lips.

"Blond hair and grey eyes," he repeats. "Is there any…recognition? A face, perhaps?"

She grits her teeth, anxiety swelling. She hadn't wanted to admit—hadn't wanted to _acknowledge_—

"Draco Malfoy," she says abruptly. "I see Draco Malfoy."

###


	2. Chapter 2

**Disasterology**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

_**Chapter One: **__p. 27 – 49_

###

_**(evolution)**_

He corners her in late November, after Potions, in a shadowy, dead-end dungeon corridor.

His eyes—liquid and grey, familiar, unfamiliar, sharp like thumbtacks and cutting like steel—are _tired_; black-red specks of dried, flaking blood are crusted under his nose, a faint fingerprint smear of pink dragging to the left, up towards his cheek.

She's on her period.

She feels nothing for him beyond the normal emotional cocktail of ambivalence and contempt and nuanced, wholly instinctive restraint.

It's a brief respite, she knows; her new body rejects contraceptives, the Veela mating genes overriding the packet of tiny white pills she's always taken to manipulate her cycles. Her hormones aren't even her own any longer—she estimates that she has five or six days before the dreams start up again.

"_Granger_," he spits out, voice furious, shoulders hunched, the crisp black collar of his jacket digging into the underside of his chin. "What—did—you—_do_ to me?"

She bites her tongue.

"What happened to your nose?" she asks, genuinely curious; he'll think she's taunting him, she recognizes a moment too late.

He draws his wand smoothly despite the visible trembling in his hands, and she wonders absently if he practices that particular motion.

"Like you don't _know_," he scoffs, glowering down at her.

She sweeps her gaze from the top of his head—fine blond hair, silky and nearly colorless, so different from her own—to the polished, squared-off toes of his boots; he's quite tall, slender and almost preternaturally graceful, but otherwise he's unremarkable. She supposes that in a certain light he might be considered handsome. She doesn't understand. Why him? She has a fleeting, bitter thought about his status as a Pureblood; she disregards it. She doesn't _understand._

"The dreams…will get worse," she says with a clinical sort of detachment. Dumbledore had been honest about that, at least. "I'm sorry for that."

He presses the tip of his wand against her sternum for less than a second before jerking backwards, seemingly without meaning to.

"_What_?" he demands, incensed. "What are you—what did you _do _to me?"

Distantly, she hears the tinny, blaring sound of a bell ringing; she wants to cry, can feel the electric sting of unshed tears pulsing against her retinas, but she knows that Malfoy is already too entrenched in this, in _her_—the mating pull, the pheromones—they won't allow him to harm her in any capacity. And if she collapses right now, he would be compelled, so very uncharacteristically, to _comfort_ her. To protect her. He'd despise it. He'd question it. He'd ask for an explanation that she isn't adequately prepared to give, because Dumbledore said that she'd have more _time_.

She can't—

She just—

She _can't_.

"I'm sorry," she says again.

###

_**(disproved theories)**_

She forgets her Transfiguration homework twice before the month ends.

"Significant lapses in memory can be a rather debilitating side effect of the mating pull," Dumbledore says apologetically. "Perhaps you require…a more comprehensive diary?"

Malfoy misses three straight Herbology lessons. When she notices his absences, her claws scratch against the splintering rowan wood of her usual workbench. She's careful to keep her eyes closed, is unwilling to see the flash of brilliant, inhuman blue reflected back at her through the gleaming greenhouse glass; she can control that much, she thinks wryly.

She spends an entire weekend in bed, sweaty and disheveled, falling in and out of hot, hazy, _fevered_ dreams that feature pale skin and long fingers and a pink, smirking mouth, swollen and raw; she rubs her thighs together, feels wet and sticky and fucking _empty_, so empty, reaches between her legs to alleviate the pressure, endless and _insistent_—but she's empty, she's empty, she needs something and she needs him and she's _empty_ as she writhes and twitches and tries so hard to make it better make it stop make it fucking go _away_ but her hands aren't right and her body is too soft and she's empty, empty, _empty_, and all she sees is blond hair and white teeth and she wants him and that and _him _so fucking _fiercely_ that she registers a chaotic frisson of fear as the depth of her need—empty, empty, she's _empty_—makes itself known because it's like dropping a penny down a well, waiting for the jarring, ethereal echo of it to ping against cement or water or loose-packed dirt, but it never comes, it never comes, and it fucking spirals on and on and _on_, forever, dark and bleak and blank and—empty, she's _empty_—

She has never hated magic before now.

She has never hated _herself_, either.

She buries her flushed, tearstained face into her pillow, and her nose begins to bleed.

###

_**(historical inaccuracies)**_

"So…this _Veela mating_…it isn't a lifelong commitment type of thing, is it?" Malfoy asks, face pinched. Snow is swirling through the turrets of the bridge, weak streams of sunlight bouncing off the moss-covered bricks. "Because—no offense, Granger, but I would rather gouge my eyes out with one of these icicles than wind up married to you."

She huffs, breath curling out white in the cold January breeze.

"It's a biological imperative," she recites, licking her lips, reminding herself that these are the facts and that they are irrefutable and that the science involved does not care at all about what is fair or not. "Its only purpose is the conception of a child. A continuation of the species. My pheromones will attract the most suitable—ah, _partner_—and once…the deed is done, so to speak, everything will go back to normal. My body has decided that _you_, for whatever unfathomable reason, are a prime candidate for paternity. What we've been feeling lately—the memory issues and the…the dreams and the nose bleeds—it will only get worse if we don't—consummate."

He grimaces, adjusting his green and silver wool scarf.

"Then it_ is_ a lifelong commitment," he concludes flatly. "A child. With a mudblood. Before I turn twenty. How lovely."

She clenches her hands into fists, the soft brown leather of her gloves squeaking with the friction.

"I didn't _choose _this, Malfoy," she replies, voice low. "I didn't choose _you_."

He glances at her, and she has trouble determining what his expression means.

"It took my parents three years to have me," he says, scratching at his chin. "Three and a half, if you're into technicalities."

"I'm an only child, too, you know. My parents—"

He ignores her.

"If you get—_pregnant_—I don't want to be shut out. Go to Weasley or Potter or whoever bloody else you like for the, ah, _emotional support_ you'll undoubtedly require, but once it's born—I want equal rights. It will be a Malfoy. It will be just as much mine as it is yours."

She tugs on the cuffs of her pea coat to keep out the frigid air.

"Co-parenting with a Slytherin," she bites out, mocking and sharp. "_How lovely_."

He props his elbows up on the wall of the bridge, leaning forward. His posture is tense.

"I want it in writing, too," he continues, as if she hadn't spoken. "I'll have my father retain an attorney to draw up a custody agreement once—conception has been confirmed."

She narrows her eyes.

"And _I'll _have _my _father retain an attorney to ascertain the legality of that custody agreement," she says pointedly.

He shoots her an unamused smirk over the rigid line of his shoulder.

"Let me guess," he drawls, kicking at a clump of weeds on the ground. "You also want to hyphenate its last name—but would it be Malfoy-Granger? Or Granger-Malfoy? Are we alphabetizing? Is that what people do?"

She gazes out at the barren landscape, trees bare, branches spindly, frozen brown grass shrouded in a deceptively pristine blanket of snow.

"I'm ovulating next week," she tells him abruptly, turning on her heel to start the long walk back to the castle. "I'll send you an owl to arrange a meeting."

###

_**(current hypotheses)**_

Dumbledore had not exaggerated the rarity of her transformation.

She is one of a kind.

She is _special_.

There isn't a record of any other hybrid manifestation as complete as hers has been—there isn't a precedent, there isn't any research to sift through, there isn't a potion or a spell or a charm to fix her—there is nothing.

She falsifies muggle secondary school records and fills out an application for the undergraduate genetics program at Cambridge. Her parents, she knows, will be pleased that she's decided to go to university after all. She writes her admissions essays and discusses, at length, her interest in mapping the human genome; she thinks about Dumbledore's attitude towards her, the calculating twinkle behind his half-moon spectacles and his untoward, academic fascination with how she reacts to Malfoy.

She is an experiment to him—a specimen to study.

He will not help her.

She'll have to help herself.

###

_**(controlled environment)**_

Malfoy tastes minty, like toothpaste, and the cushion of his lower lip catches on hers as they kiss. His chest is firm and broad and strong, and she is surprised again by how much taller—how much _bigger_—he is than her.

She keeps her eyes closed; they'll be blue, she knows, and she doesn't need to draw any more attention to what she is.

He rears back to pull off his shirt.

He breaks the zipper on her dress when he attempts to yank it down.

His body is cool and smooth—like marble, almost lifeless—as her fingertips graze the flat of his abdomen.

She can feel herself getting wetter, warmer, can feel his hand push clumsily into the front of her knickers, his cock a hard diagonal line against the placket of his trousers.

She shivers.

He shudders.

She hears his belt buckle clink and his silk boxers rustle.

Her lashes scrape against her cheeks as she squeezes her eyes shut, tight and tighter; there is a primal part of her that is _aching _for this, for him, that wants her to spread her thighs and bare her throat and just—_submit_.

But she is still human, mostly.

She is still _herself_.

His mouth is hot against her stomach. His tongue flicks out, drags beneath the waistband of her underwear. She trembles, muscles locked in a fight between _yes_ and _no_ and _more_ and _stop_ and she feels the shape of his lips change, knows he's smirking into the hollow of her pelvis—

Something starts to simmer in her blood.

He slides her knickers down her legs. His palms are soft as he runs them along the inside of her knees. His breath is coming out fast. He exhales shakily when he presses a tentative, saliva-slick kiss to her cunt.

She doesn't know what he's doing.

She doesn't know what _she's _doing.

Her fingernails prickle. Her hips roll forward as he curls his tongue around her clit.

"What are you—we don't have to do it like this," she gasps. "There's a perfectly serviceable bed—"

He stops and looks up at her. His irritation is palpable.

"I read that it's easier for you to get pregnant after you've had an orgasm," he says, and the words soak into her skin, the lilting vibration of his voice causing her to swallow noisily, helplessly—

"There are _other options _for me to—it isn't—it's unnecessary," she retorts, stumbling towards the bed. "I don't need—we have to have sex, Malfoy, but we don't have to—"

"Enjoy it?" he finishes with a patronizing sneer.

The silence stretches between them like strands of melted sugar as she perches on the edge of the bed. The sheets are a bland, inoffensive shade of slate blue and turned down at the corners; she wants to drag her claws through the middle of them, all the way to the springs of the mattress, wants to rip and tear and eradicate the expectations she can feel looming in every woven cotton fiber and crisply sewn seam—

"You think we'll be doing this for awhile, don't you?" she asks, blinking slowly. "You think it could take—years. Like your parents."

He rubs his forehead.

"Could do," he replies without inflection.

She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around her calves. Her anger has dissipated and been replaced by something that feels a lot like exhaustion.

"Rules," she eventually says, dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. "We need rules. I can't—with you—not like this."

He stares at her, impassive, and it occurs to her that she has never been able to read him very well. That bothers her, she realizes with a confusing burst of adrenaline.

"Rules," he repeats, appearing to mull over the proposition. "Yeah, alright. Fine. Get dressed. You're going to pull a bloody muscle trying to cover yourself up like that, and you're doing a shit job anyway."

###


	3. Chapter 3

**Disasterology**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

_**Chapter Two**__: p. 50 – 78_

###

_**(scientific method)**_

Three months go by.

She spends five days of every thirty with Malfoy, locked in a specially warded suite of rooms on the unoccupied side of the old eighth floor Transfiguration corridor. It always feels like a punishment, like she's doing penance for a crime she knows she didn't commit—but she can't bring herself to try and make it better, and when she does see him, she can't force her features into any expression other than that of solemn, sullen resentment.

Because they aren't friends, and they can no longer be enemies. He still sneers at her in the halls, in between classes, and she still scowls at him in return. They have sex when she ovulates, and it is—adequate. She can get through it now without her claws tearing into the mattress, without her eyes flashing and her heart twisting, and he no longer attempts to give her orgasms in ways that strike her as uncomfortably intimate. Everything is perfunctory. Practiced. They abide by the agreement she'd drawn up after that first disastrous encounter, and they rarely speak.

It is—

Well.

It just…is.

She refuses to tell Harry and Ron who her body has chosen as its temporary mate. She suspects that Ron is disappointed that it isn't him and that Harry has mostly forgotten the realities of her Veela heritage entirely. Ginny, though—

Ginny knows.

Hermione prefers not to think about that conversation, prefers not to remember how Ginny's pretty brown eyes had gone dim with pity and how her voice had been uncharacteristically soft, _cautious_, as she'd asked how bad it all was.

"It's like—like _homework_, Ginny," Hermione had responded with a tired sigh. "A…group project. It isn't—it isn't _bad_, really, it's just—something to get through."

Ginny had winced.

"You're sure? It isn't…bad?" she'd pressed.

Hermione had frowned.

"It isn't anything," she'd said tersely.

###

_**(conjecture)**_

By March, she's restless.

She is lying naked next to Malfoy, sheets pulled up over her chest, hair braided loosely down her back; he's panting slightly, pale face still pink from exertion, and is bent over the side of the bed, rifling through the book bag he'd just summoned from its spot by the door.

"Why are you—" she breaks off and shakes her head.

He pauses, an eagle feather quill clutched between his teeth.

"Why am I what?" he demands, flatly.

She squints at the ceiling; heavy oak beams crisscross each other in neat, perfectly straight lines. She wonders if there's a floor above them.

"Why are you being so _pleasant_ about all of this?" she finally asks. "You barely put up a fight when I…when you found out what was going on."

He spits out his quill and turns to stare at her.

"What sort of fight would you have liked me to put up, Granger?"

She fidgets.

"I don't know," she replies, abruptly sitting up. She creases the sheet over her breasts and toys with the end of her braid. "It's just…odd, I suppose, that you were willing to…"

"Sleep with you?" he snorts.

"_No_," she grits out, spearing him with a glare. "Not that. I just assumed—however erroneously—that you wouldn't be so _amenable_ to having your future dictated to you by something you have no control over."

The skin between his eyebrows puckers thoughtfully, and his gaze is intent as he studies her. She feels transparent—she feels _disjointed_.

"You're projecting," he says, scratching at his neck, the muscles in his bare shoulders shifting with the movement; he's shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of satin green boxers, and she wishes that she'd thought to get dressed again after they'd finished. "Those are _your _feelings about the situation, not mine. But, if you must know, I was fucking furious after you told me what was happening—I actually asked my father to send me to Durmstrang so I could get away from you."

She chews on the tip of her tongue.

"And he said no?" she asks, surprised.

Malfoy clenches his jaw.

"Apparently being chosen as the heat mate of a Veela—even a muggle-born hybrid, like you—is something of an honor."

She wrinkles her nose.

"Did you just—_heat mate_?"

He looks at her strangely.

"Yes," he drawls. "Heat mate. That's what it's called. My father explained it all to me. Didn't Dumbledore?"

A choking sound emerges from the back of her throat.

"_Heat mate_?" she repeats, aghast. "Because I'm in heat? Like a—like a _cat_?"

His grey eyes widen.

She can't decide if she wants to cry or scream.

But then he's dropping his chin, lips curved up at the corners, and coughing out an unfamiliar laugh—low-pitched and slow, _genuine_, hardly malicious, hardly _recognizable_, and he's grinning at the floor, flawless white teeth exposed and crystal cut cheekbones prominent, and she's startled, she's bemused, she's—

"Yeah, Granger," he chuckles, glancing up at her through a chunk of messy blond hair; she thinks, suddenly, that he should smile more often. "Just like a cat. So—should I be the one to ask McGonagall if we could get a scratching post in here, or do you—"

She hits him in the mouth with her pillow.

He laughs even harder.

###

_**(logical deduction)**_

She receives her acceptance to Cambridge and goes home for the Easter holiday.

Her parents are delighted by the news, as she knew they would be, and they throw an elaborate dinner party in her honor; she spends the evening in a form-fitting navy dress, modestly accepting compliments from distant relatives and long-time family friends, and flirting outrageously with the caterer's assistant after everyone else has left.

His name is Ivan. He's tall, broad shouldered and thickly muscled, with close-cropped auburn hair and cinnamon brown eyes. He has a vague Eastern European accent that she can't quite place, and offers her vodka from a stainless steel flask he'd produced from an interior pocket of his waistcoat. He's nice. He's well-mannered. He's handsome.

Her stomach rolls; she blames the alcohol.

He asks her what she's planning to study in school while he stacks sheet trays of unused phyllo dough on the kitchen island.

She giggles, takes a sip of champagne, and doesn't answer him.

He isn't Malfoy.

Her gut wrenches.

###

_**(empirical data)**_

The air is muggy from an early summer rain shower, seeping in through the partially open window, and he's undoing the knot of his tie as she steps out of her skirt.

"Go on, then," Malfoy says, motioning towards the bed; his tone is condescending. "Lie back and think of England."

She freezes while unbuttoning her blouse.

"Excuse me?"

He shucks his trousers and kicks off his shoes.

"That's what they used to say to girls, isn't it?" he remarks, grinding the heel of his palm into the front of his boxers; his cock is already half-hard, and his eyes are pinned to the crimson lace bra that covers her breasts. "When instructing them on the, ah, _ins and outs _of doing their marital duty?"

She folds her arms over her chest.

"That was an _awful_ pun," she snaps, ignoring the telltale prickle of her fingernails. "And—_what _are you talking about?"

He scoffs as he slides his underwear down his legs, hand immediately moving to stroke his cock; he's unabashed, and she swallows at the sight, throat closing and thighs tensing and instincts shrieking at her to take and take and _be _taken—

It's always like this at first.

"_No kissing on the mouth_," he recites in a voice like acid—burning and angry and vicious. "_No unnecessary touching below the neck or above the knees_. _No talking during intercourse_."

She flushes, nostrils flaring, and knows her eyes are currently a bright, blistering blue; she relishes the brief flicker of unease that ripples across his face, feels a savage thrill of anticipation as her nipples tighten and her pulse skips faster.

"You agreed to my rules," she reminds him, dropping her arms—her body is confused, caught between what she wants and what she _needs_, and her breathing falters as he licks his lips. This, too, is normal—they are _magnetic, _always, in the moments leading up to sex. It is distracting. It is _confounding._

"Of course I did!" he exclaims, squeezing the head of his cock. He can't seem to look away from her, can't seem to drag his gaze upwards from the low-rise waistband of her knickers, and she _hates_ it, she loves it, she _loathes _and she _craves_ and she _gasps_ as her claws come out, flinching when they dig into the tender flesh of her palms, warm pools of blood flooding the curlicue hollows of her balled-up fists— "What fucking choice did I have? Besides—I thought you'd get over it after a while, after you got used to me. _Christ_. It's been six months and you still keep your eyes closed!"

Her lungs tremble—her mouth waters—her vision swims, blurs, fractures—she's in revolt, she's in dissent, she's empty, no, she's _enraged_, no, she can't choose she can't pick she can't _think_—

"I already—I explained," she manages to retort, rubbing her thighs together. The friction almost hurts. "_I don't want to do this with you_. Pretending that it's something that it—that it _isn't_, that it will never, _ever _be—"

"_Granger_," he interjects sharply, and then, somehow, he's close enough to touch her, he _is _touching her, grabbing her elbows, and there are calluses on his fingertips and she can't—she doesn't—he feels _good_, no, he feels abrasive, no, and she's sensitive and she's aching and his skin is both sandpaper and silk and he's speaking quickly, soothingly, but she doesn't understand because she's empty, no, she's enraged, no, she can't—she doesn't—

###

_**(investigating new phenomena)**_

She has taken seven negative pregnancy tests by the time they graduate from Hogwarts.

Their final meeting in the castle is awkward.

"How long were you in the hospital wing?" he inquires politely, adjusting his cufflinks; they're square, gleaming platinum inlaid with small emerald M's. They're ostentatious.

"Six days," she replies, just as politely. "Thank you for asking."

He fiddles with something in his trouser pocket.

"Did they find out what was wrong?"

She sniffs, smoothing down the pleats in her skirt; she'd shortened the hem three-quarters of an inch when the weather had gotten unbearably hot, and she's still not quite used to the length.

"Dumbledore thinks that my—_reaction_, as it were, was caused by a combination of stress and anger," she says, averting her eyes. "The mating pull is a bit more complicated than we initially thought—the working theory is that it felt, well, _threatened _by the extent of my upset, and subsequently went into overdrive."

He purses his lips.

"So—you lost control, basically," he concludes.

She flinches.

"Yes, well. _Control_ isn't something I've had a lot of lately," she says defensively, toes curling inside her black leather ballet flats. "Over anything, least of all myself."

He shrugs.

"Maybe it's for the best you weren't born a Pureblood, then."

She wonders if she's imagining the brittle, sour slant to his words.

"Anyway—Dumbledore said that as long as we refrain from, um, _provoking _each other…it shouldn't happen again."

He offers her a crisp nod.

"Right. No…provoking each other. Simple."

She plucks at the end of her tie.

"Yes."

He shuffles his feet.

"Quite."

She tosses her hair back.

"Indeed."

He hesitates.

She looks determinedly at the far wall.

"I brought you a present," he says, jiggling whatever it is that's in his pocket. "But I'm not sure I should give it to you now."

"A present," she echoes skeptically.

"Yeah. An apology gift, if you will."

She quirks an eyebrow.

"Traditionally, apology gifts are accompanied by actual apologies, Malfoy," she informs him.

"Yeah, but I'm not sorry for anything, so that would be fairly pointless, wouldn't it?"

She exhales impatiently.

"Just—take your clothes off," she mutters, yanking at the zipper of her skirt. "We only have three days because of the train."

He smirks.

"Don't you want to know what your present is before you ravish me?" he asks, holding up a small glass vial.

She huffs and snatches the vial out of his hand, peering at its contents with an irritated frown.

"What is this?"

He casually tugs his shirt off.

"It's catnip, obviously."

###


	4. Chapter 4

**Disasterology**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

_**Chapter Three: **__p. 79 – 101_

###

_**(outline)**_

Her parents want to spend the summer in Greece.

"One last big family holiday before you're all grown up," her mother says, looking suspiciously tearful over a mid-morning mimosa. "Besides—you always look so pretty with a tan, don't you, darling?"

Hermione peers at a congealing puddle of hollandaise on the edge of her plate.

"I'm sure it will be lovely," she replies, forcing a smile as she considers the logistical improbability of sneaking Malfoy in and out of her bedroom at the Mykonos villa. "Hey, mum, do you think—"

"I assume you'll need to pick up some new swimsuits," her mother muses, taking a delicate sip of her drink. "Those bikinis you bought in France can't possibly fit you anymore."

Hermione nibbles at a triangle of whole-wheat toast and positively _dreads_ the conversation she's about to have with Malfoy; she can sense a tingling ache at the base of her fingernails at the thought of how he might react when she asks him to lie for her.

"We can go look after we're done here," she says, dabbing at her mouth with a white linen napkin. "But, actually, mum, I really need to make a—"

"I also made us both appointments for a wax, darling, who _knows _what their hygiene standards are like over there," her mother continues with a long-suffering sigh.

"They're fine, I'm sure," Hermione retorts, gritting her teeth and blinking rapidly as she notices her vision beginning to blur; there will be shards of electric blue piercing through the normal tawny brown of her eyes by now. "Although I have a rather important call to—"

"And do you have a reading list yet for school? A college assignment? We could get some of your textbooks if you wanted to get a head start—"

"_Mum_," Hermione interrupts, pushing her chair away from the table with a loud scrape of the hardwood floor. "I have to call someone. It's important. I'll be outside when you're done."

She doesn't wait for a response—she's irritated and she's flustered and she still can't control her emotions well enough to mask her eyes or claws or _anger_—and she leaves the restaurant.

She studies the keypad on her phone, a clunky black Motorala, and reminds herself that she isn't inviting Malfoy to Greece for _fun_, no, and that despite the unpleasantness of owing him a favor after this—he can't exactly refuse to help. No. He will do this for her, and it will be every bit as awful as she's imagining, but he will still _do it. _

He has as little choice in the matter as she does.

###

_**(experiment)**_

Malfoy laughs and laughs and laughs as her cheeks burn and her chest tightens—

"Do I have to pretend to like you while I'm there?" he drawls, static pinging against her eardrums as he chuckles into the receiver.

"No," she says evenly. "I'll be telling my parents that you're going to Cambridge with me in the fall and we have—coursework. To do. Together. And your family has a house in Athens and—"

"My family _does _have a house in Athens."

She huffs.

"Naturally."

Silence descends, and she can faintly register the squeaking of a leather chair as he shifts around.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do in Greece for three months—or, sorry, two and a _half _months, since three of those weeks will be spent fucking you."

She purses her lips and ignores the curious gaze of the valet attendant standing a few feet away.

"I don't know, Malfoy—visit a museum," she suggests tersely. "Take up drinking. Write a novel. Find a very understanding girlfriend, preferably one who doesn't speak English well and can't figure out what an unbelievable prat you are. It's _irrelevant._"

"Can't really do that last one," he replies, voice suddenly hard. "Can't so much as a get a bloody hard-on for anyone who isn't you—apparently this heat mate business is _all monogamy_, all of the time. Haven't even had a proper wank since Halloween."

And there it is again—that strange dichotomy of her mind and her body, an endless contradiction between what she knows she wants and what she _has _to want; she feels her face flush with instinctive pleasure at this _acknowledgement _of their relationship, even as her stomach sinks with something that might be guilt, or shame, or pity—it is unpleasant, it is thrilling, it is horrible, it is _electrifying, _and she remembers the night she'd tried to flirt with the catering assistant and couldn't do anything but think of Malfoy, think of grey eyes and a smirking mouth and she—

"Yeah," she says, wary and quiet. "I—I know. Well—I didn't _know _that it's the same for you, but—over Easter I tried—it doesn't matter what I tried. I just—I didn't realize that you couldn't—well. I didn't realize. That's—yeah."

He makes an odd sound in the back of his throat.

"Right," he snaps, and then coughs. "Right—I'm, ah, I'm tired of talking to you now, Granger, so…I'll be in Greece in twelve days. I'll send an owl when I get to the house. Have a…not unsafe journey."

He hangs up.

She kicks at the sidewalk and tries not to cry.

###

_**(disinfected workspace)**_

Her mother buys her a dozen new swimsuits and a pair of dangling aquamarine earrings.

"This boy who'll be visiting you—he's your…friend?"

Hermione blanches into her Styrofoam cup of frozen yogurt.

"Sort of," she hedges. "More of an…acquaintance, really. We've done projects together before, though, and we, um, work well as a team."

Her mother nods skeptically.

"Are you positive he isn't…something else? Because if he is, darling, you should really let your father know—he's been waiting half your life to intimidate a boyfriend of yours, and I'd hate if he missed the opportunity—"

Hermione stuffs a spoonful of cookies and cream frozen yogurt into her mouth to avoid protesting too violently.

It melts on her tongue.

###

_**(natural causes)**_

She doesn't hear the boat arrive.

She is lying face-down, topless and half-asleep on a large, emerald-green towel spread out across the sand. Her hair is twisted into a loose, somewhat messy knot on top of her head, and her skin is slick and soft from the tanning oil her mother had packed. The strings of her bikini bottom—a vivid, vampy red and _far_ too skimpy, really—are tickling the sides of her hips.

Her eyes are closed. She's _relaxed _for what very well may be the first time in months, and she doesn't notice the tall, slender shadow hovering above her until—

"You've got to be _kidding _me," Malfoy groans, plopping down on the end of her towel and roughly nudging her feet.

She shrieks and gasps, flipping over onto her back and holding her hands up to her breasts.

"You—what are you—you're _early_!" she says in a too-loud whisper, glancing furtively at the skinny dirt path that winds through the rocks and up to the villa. "You said you'd be here _Tuesday!"_

He brushes sand off the front of his white linen shorts and drapes her legs over his lap so he can sit more comfortably on the towel; he's wearing an expensive-looking, pastel pink v-neck t-shirt, silver-rimmed aviator sunglasses, and brown leather flip-flops. She isn't certain she would have recognized him if he hadn't announced himself the way he had.

"I was bored," he shrugs.

She sits up gingerly, careful to keep one arm covering her chest.

"That's not really an explanation," she points out.

He rubs at his chin, and she can see a trace of dark blond stubble glinting in the sunlight.

"So," he says, ostensibly changing the subject, "can I just—let me get this straight, Granger. You won't so much as kiss me on the bloody mouth when my _cock_ is inside you, but you're perfectly willing to lie about topless on a public beach. _Really_."

She rolls her eyes.

"It's a private beach, actually."

He flashes his teeth in a sharp smile.

"That's not really an explanation," he mimics, fingertips grazing the arch of her ankle.

She shivers, which is inexcusable considering the heat, and fights the urge to move away.

"You're not my boyfriend," she says bluntly, wishing he would take his sunglasses off; his lips are pressed together in a thin line, and she can't determine what expression is on his face. "We aren't in a relationship. It's easy, when we're—having sex, for the lines to get a bit blurry, especially when the Veela…is in control. But you and I—we don't like each other. My rules are there so we don't forget that."

He taps the heel of his palm against her calf and hums thoughtfully before removing her legs and getting to his feet. He appraises her for a long moment, and she has to squint into the sun to see him when he speaks again.

"You look good with a tan," he says, tilting his head to the side. "Pretty."

She stares after him, wordlessly, as he scoops up a medium-sized canvas overnight bag and begins the trek up the path to the villa.

###

_**(evidence tampering)**_

They have a late dinner of pepper stuffed olives and farm-fresh feta and wood-fired spanakopita and then he drags her back down to the beach to retrieve something from his boat; he won't tell her what it is, and she finds she's too tired to argue.

"Your parents rather like me, don't they?" he asks with a smug smile when they reach the water.

"Of course they like you," she sighs, flapping her hand as she gestures towards his…everything. "You're all—you."

"Eloquent."

She glares out at the waves, silver-blue and ethereal from the weight of the full moon.

"You know what I mean, Malfoy, don't be dense."

He tucks his hands into his pockets and shuffles closer.

"No, actually, I don't know what you mean," he replies testily. "You've gone out of your way for three-quarters of a bloody year to point out all the ways that I'm _deficient_ as a potential romantic partner, so—no, a vague '_you're you'_ isn't much of an answer."

She feels a brief flicker of remorse, but immediately shakes it off—she knows him better now, and she knows that he's baiting her, trying to engineer a specific, particular outcome for this conversation for reasons that likely have nothing to do with hurt feelings or a bruised ego.

"No?" she returns. "What do you want me to say, then?"

His tongue darts out, wetting his lower lip, and the slight pinch of the skin around his mouth makes it look like he's biting back a sneer.

"You honestly can't just give me a compliment, can you?" he asks, sounding somehow both amused and frustrated. "You can't just say—'_Well, Draco, my parents like you because you're polite and intelligent and know which bloody fork to use for the fish course'_. Surely that's _impersonal_ enough for you?"

She scrunches her nose and crosses her arms over the flat of her abdomen.

"I don't call you 'Draco'," she says in a crisp monotone.

He scoffs.

"Maybe you should start."

The skirt of her sundress flares out around her thighs as she angrily turns to face him.

"What are you doing?" she hisses—but her rage isn't materializing as it usually does, as flashing blue eyes and screeching sharp claws and she—she wonders, she panics, she catches his grey, glittering gaze and she _realizes_—no, no—_he _has caught _her_—trapped her—and she is frozen, not furious, and she _hates_ him for forcing that distinction on her, truly—

"Aren't you _sick _of being miserable?" he demands, grabbing her shoulders; his hands are warm against her skin, and the air smells like salt and seaweed and summer, and she can barely believe that he's real. She takes a deep breath. "I mean, Christ, Granger, it's pretty bloody clear that we're stuck with each other for awhile, especially if you're not pregnant soon—and what'd we agree? That we'd give it a year until we went to a specialist? And—okay, so let's say that works—you get pregnant. What happens after that? What happens if you have another heat? What happens if I'm fucking _it _for you, for the Veela? Huh? Neither of us can reasonably expect anyone to have a real relationship with either of us with _that_ looming over our heads—which means, _what_, exactly, we're barely civil _co-parents_ and practically fucking _asexual_ three weeks out of every month? Is that really what you want?"

She narrows her eyes.

Her heartbeat is a blistering quick staccato beneath her breastbone.

She _wants _to shout at him—she wants to scream and she wants to scratch and she wants him to know that he has ruined _everything_, wants him to know that she has spent months and months and _months _very pointedly not thinking about any of this, not thinking about what she would have to do if there isn't a cure and there isn't a solution and there isn't a way _out _because just as she would have never chosen him—he would have _never_ looked twice at her, he would have eventually left Hogwarts and gone on to marry some icy Pureblood heiress who would have been soft-spoken and easy to manage and fucking fully _human_, God—

Hermione swallows.

"You're wrong," she whispers, drawing her arms up, up, wrapping them around his neck and lifting herself onto her toes and—

She kisses him as fiercely as she knows how.

###

_**(latex gloves)**_

"I was a virgin," he says the next morning. "When we first—I've been betrothed to the youngest Greengrass sister since I was eight, and it's customary to—wait. It's respectful, I mean. She's only a second year."

She picks up a dried fig.

She puts it back down.

She picks it up again.

"Oh," she replies, dusting tiny granules of cane sugar off of the fruit. "That's—oh."

He methodically stirs his tea.

"I had my father break the contract earlier this year," he continues, glancing out over the balcony railing; the breeze is already hot, and there are white-caps visible in the tourmaline-clear ocean below.

She tears the fig into two pieces, then four, then six.

She isn't hungry.

"Can you do me a favor, Malfoy?" she asks abruptly.

He arches an eyebrow.

"Draco," he corrects.

She winces.

"Draco," she concedes. "Can you do me a favor—_Draco._"

He leans back in his beige wicker chair, legs spread wide and posture casual.

"Probably not."

She blinks and feels her muscles unclench—she hadn't even noticed how stiffly she had been holding herself.

"Well—regardless—my father…he saw us both leave my room this morning, together, and he's going to—he's going to attempt one of those terribly embarrassing _speeches _later where he threatens to—I don't know—break all your ribs and use them as toothpicks or something if you ever, you know, _hurt_ me, and he's going to be really disappointed if you don't act suitably cowed and submissive so if you could just—pretend, please, that you're taking him quite seriously and that our relationship is—um—based on…honorable intentions and mutual respect and, you know, legitimate affection—"

He drums his fingers on the arm of his chair.

"What do I get out of it?"

She snorts.

"You can pick the middle name of our future child," she says dryly. "Anything you like."

He braces his elbows on the table.

"Salazar?"

She grimaces.

"If that's what you…like."

He considers her with a lazy grin.

"Nah," he replies easily. "I'd much rather have a blowjob."

###


	5. Chapter 5

**Disasterology**

_By: Provocative Envy_

###

**Warning**: There is a brief description of a miscarriage in this chapter. It's short, and honestly pretty vague—the word itself isn't actually used—but I understand that it's a sensitive subject and encourage all of you to be kind to yourselves.

xoxo

###

_**Chapter Four: **__p. 102 – 126_

###

_**(objectives)**_

The summer passes slowly.

She writes letters to Harry and Ron and Ginny—she tells them about her rampant, raging, full-body sunburn, about the pleasant woodsy scent of the aloe-based lotion she'd healed it with, about the seemingly ageless midwife who had sold it to her and who Hermione is quite indisputably certain is a witch; she tells them about how the local girls all comb olive oil and lemon juice through their hair, about how the sand on the beach is soft like powdered sugar and sparkles almost as much as the turquoise-blue Mediterranean water does in the sun; she tells them about the lease she'd signed for a two-bedroom flat in Cambridge, sight unseen, and she tells them about the outlandish mermaid stories she'd heard from a Cyprian bartender after three-quarters of a bottle of ouzo, and she tells them about the olive orchards, the windmills, the fishing boats and the citrus groves and the flower-sellers—

She tells them everything.

She tells them nothing.

Malfoy feels like a secret, even though he isn't, and she isn't sure yet if she wants to keep him. He's petulant, moody, so aggravatinglyused to getting what he wants—his manners are impeccable, his accent is refined, and she isn't ashamed to admit that she is equal parts astonished and alarmed when she realizes how _charming _he's capable of being.

He drags her to Istanbul for a week in July and does almost nothing but complain about the inferior thread count of the hotel sheets. He finds a set of crystalline blue contact lenses at a market stall in Rome and says he'll have to wear them the next time they have an argument—_that way we can match, _he drawls with his customary half-smile. He teaches her how to sail on his father's boat off the coast of Crete and she forces him to take a picture with her when they sneak into the Parthenon after hours and he fucks her in front of a full-length mirror in a guest room at his family's chalet in Switzerland and their relationship—

Their _relationship_—

It isn't real. It isn't right. It's manufactured, a byproduct of science and magic, and she is never more aware of that fact than when she observes how seamlessly he fits himself into their surroundings no matter where they go or who they're with. Occasionally, she is bitter about it, about his ingrained, obnoxious confidence, his instinctual sense of _belonging _to whatever world he's choosing to inhabit at the time—because he has always, _always_ known who he is and what he is and she has had that luxury stolen from her more than once—

His identity is a foregone conclusion.

He is adaptable to her presence because he has to be.

She still hates him, she often thinks, but only until she doesn't.

###

_**(mitosis)**_

In the beginning of August there is a second pink line on her pregnancy test.

"Draco," she says, drifting into his bedroom at the house in Athens; she's wearing an old Slytherin quidditch jersey and absolutely nothing else, and she can't help but wonder, with a brief pang of regret, what Harry and Ron and Ginny would think if they could see her just then.

Malfoy glances up from his book—inexplicably, a musty yellow first edition of _Wuthering Heights._

"_Hermione,_" he returns snidely.

She blinks.

"Draco," she repeats, furrowing her brow.

He puffs his cheeks out and blows a chunk of silky blond hair away from his eyes.

"What are you—are you _practicing_ saying my name now?" he asks. "Is that really necessary?"

She shifts her weight from her left foot to her right and then back again. She opens her mouth. No sound emerges.

"Draco," she says again, strangely helpless.

He snaps the spine of his book shut and sighs.

"I'm hungry," he announces. "And since you're always harping on about _authentic local cuisine—_we should go out. If you promise to wear an exceptionally tiny skirt I'll even let you try to pay the house elves again."

The cheap white plastic handle of the pregnancy test creaks as her nails dig in to it, too hard, too desperate—this isn't what she wants. This isn't—it isn't, isn't, _isn't_.

"It's positive," she blurts out, abruptly overeager to be rid of the words as fast as she possibly can be. Maybe, she thinks, it will make them less real. "It's—I'm pregnant. We—there's—_Malfoy. _I'm pregnant. It's positive."

He unfolds himself from his reclining position on the bed, kicking the rumpled white sheets onto the floor in the process; his movements are slow, purposeful, _deliberate_, and his expression is impossible to decipher. It occurs to her that it's been months since she'd last seen him so closed off and frozen. She's startled by the thought.

"What?"

She holds up the test. She's shaking.

"It's _positive_."

His gaze narrows. He stalks forward, stopping next to her and snatching the test. He doesn't have a shirt on, and she notices that he has a cluster of faint brown freckles dusting the top of his left shoulder. She's reminded of a particular constellation—she can't remember which. She's frazzled. She's unsteady. She's afraid.

"Shit," he says dumbly. "I thought this would take longer."

Frustration and anger spike in her bloodstream, sharp and familiar, and she clings to the relief she feels as her fingertips start to tingle.

"I peed on that, you know," she informs him, jerking her chin at the test in his hand.

He grimaces.

###

_**(falsified documentation)**_

"It's apparently common practice to wait until you're twelve weeks along to tell people," he says the night before they're set to return to England. "And you're—what? Six and a half? Closer to seven, right?"

She uses her soup spoon to prod at a sliver of roast chicken; Malfoy had cut it into bite size pieces for her as soon as the waiter had disappeared into the kitchen. Hermione hadn't had a clue how to get him to stop.

"I'll be seven weeks on Monday," she replies dully, wrinkling her nose at the pile of steamed vegetables on her plate. She loathes carrots. And cauliflower. And artificially carbonated mineral water welled straight from an ancient Mediterranean hot spring. Malfoy is a _tyrant_.

"We'll have to have my family's healer come to the Manor for your eight-week appointment," he says, absently swirling his wine—white and sweet and crisp and expensive and probably the _perfect _accompaniment to his butter-drenched scallops—around the bottom of his cut-crystal goblet. "That's when you're supposed to be checked out."

She takes a deep, mostly unnecessary breath and glances out the restaurant window. The sky is dark blue velvet, clear and fathomless, and the ocean is quiet, surface glassy and gleaming with starlight and white-capped waves.

"I'm not doing _anything_ at your family's house, Draco," she says as she pierces a limp stalk of asparagus with the tines of her fork. It leaves behind a slimy trail of olive oil and ground black pepper. Her stomach rolls. "I don't like your family. Your family doesn't like me. I'll go to a muggle doctor like a normal person."

He scowls at his rosemary _pommes frites_.

"Except you're not a normal person, Hermione," he points out. "You're carrying a Malfoy heir. You're going to eventually _be _a Malfoy. There's protocol for this. The birthing chamber—"

She chokes on an undercooked floret of broccoli.

"Excuse me—_what _did you just say? I'm going to _eventually be a Malfoy_? Are you _mad_?"

He reaches up to undo the top two buttons of his pale blue chambray shirt.

"No," he replies irritably. "Are _you_?"

She wipes at the corners of her mouth with a burgundy linen napkin.

"I must have missed the part where I agreed to _marry you_ and subject myself to—to—"

"To a life of wealth and privilege and unparalleled social standing in the wizarding world?" he interjects mockingly. "Oh, yes, Granger, the _horrors _that I intend to inflict upon your person are _never-ending, _my apologies—"

"_Unparalleled social_—oh, my _God_, you can't be _serious_," she bleats in a furious stage whisper. "You think my willingness to sleep with you outside the confines of my _ovulation week _means that I want to be _Mrs. Draco Malfoy_?"

His face flushes with color, highlighting the aristocratic angle of his cheekbones; her vision is swimming, though, her champagne-pink manicure cracking along the edges as her claws threaten to emerge.

"Ah," he scoffs, "I forgot that muggles have a somewhat different view on the appeals of premarital sex. Not a lot of self-control on that side of the blanket, is there?"

Her claws rip through the tablecloth.

"At least we aren't _slaves _to bizarre, archaic traditions that completely rob of us of our autonomy," she hisses. "What was that about a _birthing chamber_?"

He clenches his jaw and saws into a scallop with militant precision.

"See—this is the _problem _with mudbloods," he says, tone sour and cold. "You barge into _our world_—uninvited, mind you—and think of it as some kind of—_amusement park_. A novelty. You find out magic is real and you see us fly around on broomsticks and you think our way of life is so sodding _quaint_—at best—but that we're all narrow-minded, inbred fucking bigots who need to be shown the error of our _shamefully ignorant_, antiquated ways before we can mingle with the twentieth century. You assume that you're somehow _superior _to me—to my family—because you have liberal, ever so _modern_ opinions about—about _what_, exactly, marriage and gender equality and the—what did you call it? The _social construct of virginity_? Meanwhile, you inherit an impossibly rare magical gene that any Pureblood would _literally kill to possess_ and all you care to do is pout and cry and whine about how _unfair _it all is. You're such a—"

He breaks off.

Her lips tremble.

The sudden silence between them is punctuated by the lilting strum of a street performer's guitar—she thinks he might be playing an acoustic version of an Aerosmith song but her brain isn't working properly and she doesn't—

She doesn't know.

She isn't sure.

"I'm such a—what?" she asks, closing her eyes.

Malfoy doesn't answer for a while. She can faintly hear him chewing as he continues to eat.

"I shouldn't say," he finally replies.

"Why?"

His knife scrapes against his plate—an unpleasant shriek of jagged, serrated silver and oven-glazed porcelain.

"Because I can't take it back if I do," he says matter-of-factly.

###

_**(fail rate)**_

The cramping begins on the flight back to Heathrow.

She's settling into her first class seat—two rows ahead of Malfoy—with a bottle of seltzer and a sleeve of saltine crackers, when she registers a slow, pinching ache permeating the lower half of her abdomen. She squeezes her hands together. She licks her lips. She looks around and then over her shoulder. She sees that he's already asleep, a black velvet travel pillow squished behind his neck.

She bleeds off and on for six days.

She feels guilty for not feeling guiltier.

She wonders if it's the same for him.

She decides that it must be.

He buys her expensive boxes of café au lait truffles and a seven-hundred page biography on Marie Antoinette and seems to understand something fundamental about how she wants them to interact in the aftermath—he dispenses her pain medication with a devastatingly droll smirk, makes a point of hiding the television remote under the couch cushions when she mentions a Jane Austen marathon, and tricks her into making a comprehensive list of all her favorite boys' names so that he has _sufficient time to devise a suitably horrifying nickname for the next one, come on, Granger, keep up_. It's morbid and awful and nothing at all like what Harry or Ron or Ginny would do for her if they knew what was happening; she suspects that it's better, actually.

She doesn't allow herself to commit to the thought.

###

_**(delineation)**_

He comes with her parents to help move her into her flat in Cambridge and spends most of the morning taking a nap on her new bed and practicing replication charms on various household appliances. After the ice maker on the fourth refrigerator accidentally spits out a pile of sugar cubes, her parents leave to go pick up dinner.

"The sugar couldn't have come from _nowhere_, obviously, so do you think I somehow transfigured the water into—"

"Yes," she interrupts, exasperated; she gnaws on the plastic cap of her permanent marker and grimly appraises an unlabeled cardboard box. "You did. Your wand movements towards the end got sloppy."

He hums, and then leers.

"I didn't realize you were watching me so closely."

She chucks an unopened roll of packing tape at his head.

"No need to sound so smug about it."

"There's no need for _violence_, either, God."

She reaches up to tighten the neon pink elastic holding her hair up.

"I'm conditioning you," she says dryly.

He sprawls out on her couch and props his legs up on the coffee table.

"Don't most girls usually use sex for that sort of thing?"

She grins as she unwraps a matte black ceramic vase her mother had bought.

"I would, but you have remarkable self-preservation instincts. I'm just taking advantage, really."

"Mm. You're good at that," he mutters.

She bends forward to pick up an inexplicable bundle of wiry red sticks—perhaps they're decorative?—and then frowns.

"What?"

"I said that you're good at that," he replies easily. "Taking advantage."

She tenses.

"What does _that_ mean?"

He yawns.

"It means—oh, I don't know—you're just a bit selfish, aren't you? Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's mostly just annoying."

"I'm not selfish," she says, taken aback.

"No," he agrees calmly. "And that isn't really what I—you're right. You're not selfish. You're—obstinate. You can't handle being wrong, usually to other people's detriment."

"And you think that's worse."

"It _is_ worse."

She tears at the crooked line of clear plastic tape that's holding the box together.

"Compromise goes both ways," she snaps, oddly stung by his comment.

He stares at her in disbelief.

"Yeah, you need to perhaps _revisit_ the definition of that particular word, Granger."

She opens her mouth to reply—_scathingly_, she's positive she was going to reply _scathingly_—but then the doorbell rings and Malfoy is stretching out his long, long legs and moving to fling open the door and it's her parents, of course it is, no one else even knows she lives here yet, and the pervasive smell of grease and parmesan cheese and oregano wafts through wide open living space and Malfoy chuckles conspiratorially at something her father says and her mother is tittering about plates and napkins and wine and Hermione—

Hermione feels as if she's missing something.

###

**Author's Note**: For those of you wondering when Draco's development arc is going to actually start—the answer is the next chapter, which also happens to include the angriest sex scene I've ever written. If you're also wondering why I'm portraying Draco as such a sympathetic character—I'm not. He _appears _mostly sympathetic to Hermione, who is narrating, but I have alluded more than once to his shadiness and _oh boy_ is that going to pay off soon.

xoxo

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